


how to shoot at someone who outdrew you

by 10redplums



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Magic, Religion, Sacrilege, kid heroes have it rough
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-14 21:47:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28927563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/10redplums/pseuds/10redplums
Summary: At least she’d be more prepared. She thinks. Maybe.As it is she has. A paper sword, a paper shield. An ink pot. She has to laugh.apparently I really like night-before-the-final-battle conversations. who knew?





	how to shoot at someone who outdrew you

_ “I’m going to kill god.” _

_ “Margaret, what?” _

_ “Isn’t that like a thing? Kill your father when you meet him on the road?” _

_ “Marg first of all that’s like completely not the point and second of all you’re not even Buddhist,” _

Kai watches her, saying nothing, as she lies awake, scenarios whirling through her mind. Miss Hazel is gone. Her dreams are plagued by angels.

All her life, she’d been- good. Questionably good. Good, by certain metrics. Not by the ones that “counted,” which said if she’d thought it she’d already committed it. Bah. Who could live like that, not afforded freedom even in their own head?

Anyway. 

“What do I do if ‘God’, if that is his real identity, turns out to be a serial kidnapping, power-hungry bastard?” had not been in “Questions young people ask and answers that work.” Margaret would be very surprised if it had been, but at least she’d be more prepared. She thinks. Maybe.

As it is she has. A paper sword, a paper shield. An ink pot, in case she needs to write more. She has to laugh.

“What am I going to do _?” _ she says, pressing her hands over her face. She feels the bed dip as Kai sits down beside her and puts a hand on her head.

She hadn’t saved the first girl. She hadn’t saved the second girl. Miss Hazel is missing, possibly dead. Margaret is nineteen.

She takes Kai’s hands and he lies down beside her, spreading the crimson silk of his hair over the bed, and she looks at him, sweet beautiful Kai who is always sniping at Miss Hazel, who is old as balls and loves her, in his way. She squeezes gently.

“You know,” she says, “I grew up being told that- that God was like. This dad guy who you could pray to when you had problems and stuff. They gave us, like, a whole bunch of books on it.  _ Questions young people ask _ was okay, I guess, though I did grow up thinking being pressured into drugs would be more of a problem than it was. 

“I was a deeply religious kid, you know? Mom worried about it a little, and then some stuff happened and I just… wasn’t, and then  _ this _ .” He laughs and squeezes her hands back, pressing the backs of her fingers to his lips, and she presses her forehead briefly to their interlaced fingers. “I’m just nineteen. What am I going to  _ do _ ?” she says again. He looks at her, eyes shimmering faintly, soft lips still pressed to her hands. He tangles their legs together.

“Cheer up,” he says, where a year ago he might have said  _ take heart, _ “you’ll be partaking in a glorious tradition. There would be feasts and revels when a god was killed; priests could raise or level cities with a handful of such morsels.

“And you will not be alone, of course,” he adds. “I will be with you every step of the way. Together, we can take down any god.” He wipes her tears away and smiles at her, radiant, and she almost believes him. 


End file.
